[Haskell-cafe] strict, lazy, non-strict, eager

[wren ng thornton]

On 12/28/11 10:23 AM, Jon Fairbairn wrote:
> Thiago Negri<evohunz at gmail.com>  writes:
>
>> Lazy evaluation is one implementation of non-strict semantics, where
>> the arguments are evaluated only when they are needed.
>
> I would say this:
>
> * non-strict semantics require that no argument is evaluated
>    unless needed.

I'm not sure that's quite right. As mentioned upthread, you can have 
eager non-strict languages. I think the more correct way to view it is 
that strict semantics require that non-termination of evaluating 
arguments entails non-termination of evaluating the application ---i.e., 
if [[ x ]] == _|_ then [[ f x ]] == _|_---, whereas non-strict semantics 
do not have this requirement.

Thus, we're allowed to evaluate unused arguments, provided that doing so 
does not inhibit us from giving the proper result for evaluating the 
application. Some possibilities would be: to fork off a thread for 
evaluation of each subterm, or to eagerly evaluate arguments 
optimistically but then fall back to a non-strict evaluation model if 
the argument takes too long to finish, or to restrict ourselves to a 
total language and then use any strict semantics we like (since strict 
and non-strict coincide if there is no bottom),...

-- 
Live well,
~wren